Supergirl Star and Cousin In Gay therapy

This is one of those times when I think crowdfunding is a good thing. A star from TV’s Supergirl, Jeremy Jordan, is trying to raise money so he and his fans and his family can save his cousin from that kind of gay therapy that’s referred to often as “pray away the gay.”

According to the fundraising page that has collected nearly half of Jordan’s $100,000 goal, Sarah’s strict Christian parents placed her in the facility for troubled teens for her “disease” after she took her girlfriend to prom as her date, KING-TV reported.

Good for Jeremy Jordan. And even better, Colton Haynes who just seems to get better each day donated $5,000 to the cause.

American Apparel Trolls Donald Trump

I’m not sure I understand why they are doing it, but American Apparel is going after Donal Trump and his slogan with their own play on words, “Make America Gay Again.”

“Equality in general will always be important to the brand and will always be a conduit for charities like HRC and the Ally Coalition that are advocating for basic rights,” American Apparel public relations director Roberta Oglakhchyan said in an interview. As for what Trump himself might think of the collection: “We would like to decline to comment on this question.”

And water is wet.

Well it’s no wonder they decline to comment. I’ve read a lot about each political candidate and their stand on gays, and their previous stands. So far, I haven’t seen anything from Trump that’s much different from any other candidate. In fact, I believe it to be true that Trump recently said discrimination against transgender people in rest rooms is wrong…and costly. You can check that out in this article.

As a side note, it was Hillary Clinton who refrained from supporting legalized marriage until after the SCOTUS ruling…and it was her husband who really nailed the door shut for gay marriage in the 90s with DOMA. And I don’t need to link to that. I also understand why President Clinton did this. I was there. I remember it well.

So again, I honestly don’t understand why American Apparel is doing this…and I think you all know that I’m totally gay and I support all LGBT equal rights. But what’s even more ironic, and a little sad, is that each time a company…or someone…does something like this Trump only gets a million more supporters. I’ve never seen anything like it my lifetime.

I personally think the time has come to see more gay content in classic tropes and stories. It’s what I’ve been doing for a number of years now with my own books, like An Officer and His Gentleman, and Pretty Man.

Robin Hood and his Merry Men are a band of outlaws, brought together by their desire to steal from the rich and give to the poor. But what if they had something else in common, like they were a different kind of outlaws? What if they were all gay?

That’s what Oni Press’ new Merry Men comic series explores, by writer Robert Rodi, artist Jackie Lewis and colorist Marissa Louise. This alternate take on the classic hero and his compatriots goes back to the legend’s roots and rebuilds around an LGBT core.

Again, this is what I’ve done at times over the years to get my own point across to readers. Of course I got slammed for it in reviews and romance blogs by the romance police at the time. Even though you cannot find one single word taken from anything, and I only used the tropes and story lines in my gay parodies, they threw out words like plagiarism. If I had complained about this at the time I would have been slammed even harder as a badly behaving author. So I kept my mouth shut until recently, but I always knew time would prove them dead wrong. In the same respect, I’m still here and many of them are long gone.

I’m linking to An Officer and a Gentleman below and you can read the reviews yourselves. Some reviews are great, some not so great. But I’m glad the not so great reviews are still up there as proof. One reviewer in particular, someone who goes by the name “Sirius,” thought I was trying to “pay homage” to the story, when in fact I was parodying the story because gay people have never, ever had gay content in the past. When I write a book, I don’t pay homage to anyone. I never even use the word “homage.” My books that are parodies are statements about the lack of gay content that I (and millions of other gay men) grew up with.

And I want to make it clear I’m not complaining about this and I’m not knocking the reviewer. I don’t hold any grudges. Actually, I’m glad it happened because it gives me good examples to post here on the blog from time to time. And maybe, just maybe, someone can learn from them.

Ryan Field is the author of over 100 published works of LGBT fiction, the best selling Virgin Billionaire series, a pg rated hetero romance that was featured on The Home Shopping Network titled, "Loving Daylight," and a few more works of full length fiction with a pen name. He's worked in publishing for twenty years as a writer, editor, and associate editor. His work has been in Lambda Award winning anthologies and he's self-published a few novels with Ryan Field Press. You can reach him by leaving a comment here, or at rfieldj@aol.com